overeignty on even more favourable conditions
than had once been proposed to Henry III., the Advocate told him roundly
that my lords the States were not likely to give the provinces to any
man, but meant to maintain their freedom and their rights. The envoy
replied that his Majesty would be able to gain more favour perhaps with
the common people of the country.

When it is remembered that the States had offered the sovereignty of the
provinces to Henry III., abjectly and as it were without any conditions
at all, the effrontery of Henry IV. may be measured, who claimed the same
sovereignty, after twenty years of republican independence, upon even
more favourable terms than those which his predecessor had rejected.

Barneveld, in order to mitigate the effect of his plump refusal of the
royal overtures, explained to Buzanval, what Buzanval very well knew,
that the times had now changed; that in those days, immediately after the
death of William the Silent, despair and disorder had reigned in the
provinces, "while that dainty delicacy--liberty--had not so long been
sweetly tickling the appetites of the people; that the English had not
then acquired their present footing in the country, nor the house of
Nassau the age, the credit, and authority to which it had subsequently
attained."

He then intimated--and here began the deception, which certainly did not
deceive Buzanval--that if things were handled in the right way, there was
little doubt as to the king's reaching the end proposed, but that all
depended on good management. It was an error, he said, to suppose that in
one, two, or three months, eight provinces and their principal members,
to wit, forty good cities all enjoying liberty and equality, could be
induced to accept a foreign sovereign.

Such language was very like irony, and probably not too subtle to escape
the fine perception of the French envoy.

The first thing to be done, continued the Advocate, is to persuade the
provinces to aid the king with all their means to conquer the disunited
provinces--to dispose of the archdukes, in short, and to drive the
Spaniards from the soil--and then, little by little, to make it clear
that there could be no safety for the States except in reducing the whole
body of the Netherlands under the authority of the king. Let his Majesty
begin by conquering and annexing to his crown the provinces nearest him,
and he would then be able to persuade the others to a reasonable
arra